Phone bills are notoriously difficult to understand, but it is well worth taking the time to make sure that you understand every line of your bill.
It is surprising how many businesses could save money by having a closer look at their monthly bills for fixed phone lines, mobile phones and internet services.
The reason that many businesses don’t regularly review their telecommunication service provider bills is that these bills are unnecessarily complex. As a result they are difficult to interpret and correlate with the actual services being used.
Over the years we have come across cases where businesses are paying unnecessarily for:
- phone lines that are not being used
- uncompetitive call packages for fixed phone lines or mobile phones
- outdated (ie slow) and expensive internet packages
The paragraphs below give some examples of how we have been able to save money for our customers by carrying out a detailed audit of their bills for telephone and internet services.
A refund from BT
We had a case recently where a long established business in Edinburgh had an item on their BT bill for a service that meant nothing to us or to the customer.
We queried this with BT and they also had no idea what the service was.
In the end we managed to get a rebate for our client of over £1,000 for something that was being incorrectly charged.
Unused lines & expensive calls
Another case that we had recently was a chain of pubs and restaurants in Edinburgh that had been built up gradually through acquisition over the last 20 years.
We visited each establishment armed with the phone bills for that establishment and physically identified the lines and services that were being used and compared them with those listed on phone bills.
We were able to save money immediately by ceasing unnecessary lines and services.
We also managed to make some long term savings in call charges by switching all the lines and calls to a single provider with a significantly better call package.
This scenario is typical for organisations that have several sites or businesses that pay the service provider bills centrally.
The person paying the phone bills at the head office often has no idea what services are being used at each site.
A better & cheaper internet package
We had another situation only last week where we discovered that a customer was paying Virgin Media £70 per month for an old Telewest 4Mb/s internet service.
We were able to switch the customer to the current Virgin Media business package that had a much faster download speed of 20Mb/s with free phone line rental and free landline phone calls for a total price of £50 per month.
The key point here is that service providers are under no obligation to switch a customer to their current lower-cost better-value packages.
It is the customer’s responsibility to identify a better package and request the switch.
Renting your phone system from BT?
Another area where we find that customers have been paying for something that is not required is phone system rental.
The phone system rental charge appears on the BT phone bill alongside the phone line rental and it can be difficult to separate the two unless you are familiar with the terminology or jargon.
We have come across situations where businesses are paying BT for rental of an old phone system that is not being used any more.
Usually the phone system is in a cupboard waiting to be collected by BT.
More common is the situation where a business is paying rental for an old phone system that can be replaced with a newer and better phone system on a lease that is significantly less than their current rental payments.
Conclusion
Before paying your monthly (or quarterly) phone & internet bills take a moment to ensure that you fully understand the bill and that you are not paying for any items that are not required.
If possible spend some more time checking that you are getting good value for money for the services that you are using.
This will require checking with your existing provider and comparing with services from alternative providers.
If you need assistance with this then contact Premitel. Our knowledge and experience will ensure that you are not paying for services that you don’t need and are not using and that you are paying as little as possible for the telephone and internet services that you do need.